Where E-Books Reign

A study indicates that 70% of Russians now read electronically. But these aren’t Amazon downloads:

According to representatives of Eksmo, Russia’s largest publishing house, up to 95%% of all downloads of ebooks are pirate copies, something at results in the annual losses to the industry of 4 billion rubles (USD $120 million). … According to Andrei Yurchenko, a senior analyst at Pro-books magazine, one of Russia’s leading publishing trade magazines, pirated sites remains popular in Russia resulting from the lack of any real competition from companies that distribute legal content: it is estimated that between 100,000-110,000 titles are available in pirated editions, compared to just 60,000 available legally.

[M]ost Russians read ebooks on a computer or notebook. Tablets occupy the last place on a list (21%), after dedicated e-readers (38%), and smartphones (28%). Tablets taking over e-readers is clearly not a worldwide trend.